December 14: The Shining

The Shining

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Stanley Kubrick’s foreboding masterpiece of psychological terror is an icy Stephen King scare-fest best experienced on screen. Determined to make a new start for his family, Jack Torrance accepts a winter job as caretaker at the remote, snowbound Overlook Hotel to make headway with his frustrated writing career. But as isolation grows and his young son’s disturbing visions intensify, sanity will erode, and the gigantic lodge’s sinister secrets will be revealed. Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd are stellar in one of cinema’s all-time great nightmares, with Scatman Crothers, Joe Turkel, and Philip Stone doing superior work in key supporting roles.

“Stanley Kubrick’s cold and frightening The Shining challenges us to decide: Who is the reliable observer? Whose idea of events can we trust? … It is this elusive open-endedness that makes Kubrick’s film so strangely disturbing.” – Roger Ebert

“Kubrick made a majestically terrifying movie, where what you don’t see or comprehend shadows every move the characters make.” – Martin Scorsese